"The Disengaged Teen" with Authors Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop

Athena Books is thrilled to welcome authors Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop to discuss their new book, r. This is a timely and important read for parents and educators. Don't miss your opportunity to be part of this conversation!

Your ticket for the event includes wine, seltzer, and light dessert.

About the book:

“Our education systems are shortchanging far too many teenagers. This book is brimming with insights on how to change that. It’s an engaging, evidence-based, and practical read about how to develop a generation of lifelong learners.”—Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Potential and Think Again, and host of the podcast Re:Thinking
A powerful toolkit for parents of both checked-out and stressed-out teens that shows exactly what to do (and stop doing) to support their academic and emotional flourishing.
Adolescents are hardwired to explore and grow, and learning is mainly how they do this. But a shocking majority of teens are disengaged from school, simultaneously bored and overwhelmed. This is feeding an alarming teen mental health crisis. As kids get older and more independent, parents often feel powerless to help. But fear not, there are evidence-backed strategies to guide them from disengagement to drive, in and out of school.
For the past five years, award-winning journalist Jenny Anderson and the Brookings Institution’s global education expert Rebecca Winthrop have been investigating why so many children lose their love of learning in adolescence. Now, weaving extensive original research with real-world stories of kids who transformed their relationships with learning, they identify four modes of learning that students use to navigate through the shifting academic demands and social dynamics of middle and high school, shaping the internal narratives about their skills, potential, and identity:
• Resister. When kids resist, they struggle silently with profound feelings of inadequacy or invisibility, which they communicate by ignoring homework, playing sick, skipping class, or acting out.
• Passenger. When kids coast along, consistently doing the bare minimum and complaining that classes are pointless. They need help connecting school to their skills, interests, or learning needs.
• Achiever. When kids show up, do the work, and get consistently high grades, their self-worth can become tied to high performance. Their disengagement is invisible, fueling a fear of failure and putting them at risk for mental health challenges.
• Explorer. When kids are driven by internal curiosity rather than just external expectations, they investigate the questions they care about and persist to achieve their goals.
Understanding your child’s learning modes is vital for nurturing their ability to become Explorers. Anderson and Winthrop outline simple yet counterintuitive parenting strategies for connecting with your child, tailoring your listening and communication styles to their needs, igniting their curiosity, and building self-awareness and emotional regulation.

About Jenny Anderson:

Jenny Anderson is an award-winning journalist, author, and speaker with more than 25 years of experience. Her work has appeared in some of the world’s leading publications, including The New York Times, where she was on staff for 10 years, TIME, The Atlantic and Quartz. She’s hosted a podcast, launched a newsletter and is a frequent speaker and moderator at events around the world including the World Economic Forum in Davos, SxSWEdu, ASU/GSV, The Brookings Institution, Teach for All and ONE, among others.

Her work examines what it means to be human: how kids learn and evidence-backed ways adults can support them; managing technology for benefit and not harm, and ways to build and sustain important relationships, from being a parent or partner, teacher or boss. She is driven to find ways to thrive in a noisy, unpredictable and complicated world.

Her latest book, The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids to Learn Better, Feel Better and Live Better (Crown) will be published January 7, 2025, co-authored with Rebecca Winthrop, Director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institute. Her first book, It's Not You, It's the Dishes applies behavioral economics to conflict in marriage and won a Books for a Better Life award in 2011. Before getting obsessed with the art and science of learning, Jenny covered finance and markets for The New York Times, winning a Gerald Loeb award in 2008 for her coverage of the financial crash.

She lives in London with her husband and two daughters.

About Rebecca Winthrop:

Rebecca Winthrop is a leading global authority on education. She is the director of the Center for Universal Education at Brookings and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. She conducts large-scale studies on how to better support children's learning so that they can thrive in life, work, and as constructive, connected citizens. In 2019, she founded the Family Engagement in Education Network with 60 family-facing education organizations which today works globally including in the U.S. with numerous schools, school districts, states and the federal government. She regularly advises education leaders across schools, foundations, teacher and student networks, and companies. She has authored hundreds of articles, reports, blogs, and book chapters. Her work is widely cited including in The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, BBC, CNN, ABC, Time, Newsweek and NPR. She holds a BA from Swarthmore College and a PhD from Columbia University's Teachers College. She lives in Washington DC with her husband, two children, and dog Chewie.

Host or Publisher Athena Books